Tag Archives: Agora de la Danse

Color me embarrassed! Last month I went to go see The You Show by Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM, and it wasn’t until long after I had seen the show that I discovered that instead of it being one dance performance in four acts, that it was in fact four separate dances combined together to make an evening’s program. Oooops. (And it’s obvious that my habit of going into a performance attempting to be a tabula rasa works). Then on top of that, my notes, which get scrawled in the dark, and sometimes are extremely difficult to decipher after the fact, somehow got mixed up and taken out of order. So I wasn’t certain that lines that I had written, such as “repetition of voice / with new moves / switch to her” were referring to something that happened before or after “moving together / all others leave / and we’re back to two.”

But I think I have everything sorted out as best as I can, and can attempt to make some sense out of what I saw (apologies, again for my lack of timeliness, but as per normal, things here have been busy). I find life is so much easier when I don’t really have to force some sort of narrative on something that doesn’t have one. Plus in this case, there are a whack of other reviews and articles to draw from and react to.

In this particular case I find it fascinating that without too much trouble I was able to find over a dozen reviews from a variety of places (at first I was concerned that they were all from North America, but then looking at Kidd Pivot Frankfurt RM’s website it appears that it has only been performed outside of North America in three places. It’s also a little weird that it has been performed 22 different times in eight different cities in the rest of the world versus nine times in two cities here in Quebec. I wonder if there are any other international touring companies that spend 30% of their time here in Quebec? But I digress).

The reviews, as you might expect, were all over the place. Most took advantage of the fact that there were four different pieces to say that three of the four were great and one was not. But there was no consensus on which one sucked. I particularly enjoyed Wendy Perron’s take over at Dance Magazine, where she wrote “I’m skipping the third duet because it didn’t add much…” Imagine skipping the third side of Tommy, because it didn’t add much. Or skipping the lobster omelette in your review of the Pied de Cochon’s sugar shack? If you’re reviewing it, review the whole thing. Not just the good bits.

Anne Plamondon in A Picture of You Falling, picture by Micheal Slobodian

As for my take? Overall I thought it was quite good. The dancers (Eric Beauchesne, Peter Chu, Ariel Freedman, Sandra Marín Garcia, Yannick Matthon, Anne Plamondon, Ji?í Pokorný, Cindy Salgado and Jermaine Maurice Spivey) were all amazing to varying degrees – great amazing, really good amazing, very good amazing and just plain amazing.

In my notes the only dancer that I singled out happened to be Ms. Plamondon. I wrote “she quite accomplished dancer (sic).” But at the time I didn’t know that in fact she was who she was. Personally I think that her background (or what I know of her background, I’m no walking dance encyclopedia) in both Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and Rubberbandance Group serves her well in dancing to Ms. Pite’s work. Where Rubberbandance does a very obvious and direct combination of hip-hop and classical dance techniques. From what I have seen of Kidd Pivot, their work appears to me to be more variations and modifications on hip-hop while leaning heavily on the rigorousness of both classical dance techniques and training.

Eric Beauchesne and Jiri Pokorny in The Other You, photo by Michale Slobodian

The variations and modifications, for the most part work way more often than they don’t. Again, I think when it works, it has more to do with the caliber of the of the dancers in Kidd Pivot and when it doesn’t more to do with the caliber of the choreography. Or in blunter terms and plainer English, Ms. Pite is obviously trying to combine old moves (for the lack of a better term) in new ways while at the same time develop new moves. Because the dancers in her company are so good, most of the choreography shines really well. But occasionally, Ms. Pite stretches too far, tries too hard and no matter how good the dancers are, the moves aren’t as bright. Unlike Ms. Perron, I thought that the parts that didn’t work, were exactly that, small parts within the larger piece, not entire pieces.

If I were to get specific, one of the parts that didn’t work for me was when everybody else turns Ms. Garcia and Mr. Spivey into Transformers in A Picture of You Flying

Transformers

I must’ve spent over an hour searching through my files trying to find the other time I’ve seen dancers become Transformers, however my searching skills are obviously not up to snuff, because for the life of me, I can’t. But I am completely convinced (unless I made it up) that I’ve seen something similar before. But whether or not I have almost becomes secondary, because beyond being derivative I thought there were other reasons why it didn’t work.

While it was obvious that Ms. Pite wanted something cinematographic, it ended up turning the piece into something more cartoony. During the piece Mr. Spivey recites what I was calling simplistic pop psychology. Things like “It’s about thinking about later, later / And know your own limits / And know what makes us vulnerable.” Or “It has nothing to do with the glory / You do it because you love it.” Which had the effect of making the piece comedic in nature – the audience laughed at some of the jokes in the text. However, I presume that Ms. Pite wanted the subject matter and the dancing to be taken somewhat seriously. In the parts when there weren’t any jokes, it was possible to take the subject seriously. But once they turn into the Transformers it makes it extremely difficult to take the dance very seriously, which then also ends up making the subject matter silly as well. And I am not convinced that that is a good thing. But as I mentioned, it’s a small part of a larger whole, and not a profound fault. More like a scab the day before it’s going to fall off. Something that you’re aware of, and is mildly annoying, but not major.

I guess at this point I should mention The Other You, and Das Glashaus, the other two pieces in the evening’s performance.

I’m not sure why Ms. Pite decided to use the Moonlight Sonata as part of the score to The Other You other than the fact that it is a very pretty piece of music. The dancing is also very pretty. Ms. Pite steals the idea from numerous other dance performances in that she has Mr. Beauchesne and Mr. Pokorny mirror each other and/or control each other like marionettes, but with invisible strings. But in this case, the moves that they do, again modified hip-hop, in my notes I called them “funky chicken” “kung-fu fighting” and “robot,” are pretty good. In performances like that the dancers need to be perfectly synchronized and Mr. Beauchesne and Mr. Pokorny were.

There’s not an awful lot I remember about Das Glashaus, and it also is the piece where my notes got all out of order. There was some crashing sounds (which other people called breaking glass, probably due to knowing the title in advance) there’s some wrestling or aggressive cuddling, and modified yoga according to my notes, but overall it mainly draws a blank. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, just how it happens to be.

I think that trying to combine the four pieces thematically is a little bit of a stretch – especially if you’re viewing them with no prior knowledge. Instead of “The You Show” it just as easily could have been called the “You Two Show,” or “Four Duets.” But that does not take away from the fact that the dancing was pretty gosh darn good. For the most part when I go to see contemporary dance, I’m not expecting a story. I’m hoping to see some spectacular moving. It seems to me that dance has become so technically sophisticated that for the most part trying to combine it with some other art form (like theatre) ends up making a mess. Either because the dancers aren’t as accomplished in the other art form as they are in dance, or that the choreographer isn’t as accomplished or quite frequently both. In this case, while I recognize that there was an attempt to combine things thematically, because I went in not knowing that, it was mighty tough to figure out on the fly. Which does not take away from the dancing or the choreography, in fact to me, makes them even that much better.

After reading those, I almost wanted to write something so over-the-top positive that it could make all those meanies go away. But I quickly remembered that I wasn’t Ms. Doté’s mother, and it really wouldn’t be appropriate to try and protect her from perceived bullies. It’s something automatic in me, not only to be contrarian, but also to want to help the underdog.

Let’s back up a bit, Merry Age was performed by Jenny Brizard, Fernanda Leal, Xavier Malo, Mohamed N’Diaye, Francois Richard and Émilie Tremblay at the Agora de la Danse back in the middle of February. (You see! I am catching up!) Some sort of hybrid type of performance that had bits of musical theater, modern dance and lots of other stuff (I went looking for some examples of dance from the Côte d’Ivoire, but only found this and there really wasn’t an awful lot of that in Merry Age). As per normal, I went in completely blind. I hadn’t read any of the press kit (yes, there was a press kit) refused to read the program, and politely asked my companion not to tell me anything in advance.

So when it started up like some sort of musical, I was very surprised. While I quite like musicals, specifically MGM musicals from the 30s, 40s and 50s with Gene Kelly and/or Fred Astaire (but in a pinch just about any musical will do) I was completely and totally unprepared to see a musical at L’Agora de la Danse. After a bit, it reverted back to more standard contemporary dance fare, every now and again launching into song.

I also had become very comfortable with the concept of no plot, and here was a performance that clearly had plot. Most of the time, kind of like the song (for the most part only one song was used) plot wandered in and out of the show. But since I wasn’t expecting it, I didn’t get too attached to it.

This might have been due in part, to the fact that while it was pretty obvious that the show was about marriage (Ms. Doté even announced it at the beginning) for the first part it didn’t strike me that any of the couples were fixed. Each woman danced with all of the guys and vice-versa, so it never occurred to me to take it that literally. Once that was out of the way, it became very easy to watch.

As I’ve come to expect these days, the set was minimal. There was some kind of podium in the back that held a rack of clothes for the dancers to put on, there was a chair, then there were more chairs and a table and that was about it. You can get some sense of the set and the piece itself here.

It also seemed to me to be one of those pieces that could only be made here in Quebec, as it incorporated bilingual text. What I really got a kick out of besides the bilingualism, was the biracial nature of the couples. Although now that I am able to reflect a little bit more on it, there was one bit in Spanish as well, so it in fact was trilingual, and Ms. Doté could have pushed the envelope slightly by having some non-heterosexual couples as well. But those are more about my agenda than her piece. I realize now that it also could have been made in many other places besides Montreal.

The dancing itself was quite good. Again, my memory is sketchy at best, but I have a vague feeling in the pit of my stomach that the parts where all six dancers were dancing were slightly better than when there were obvious duets. There were a couple of “really nice’s” in my notes. One in particular when they did a round in movement instead of in song, and another after they spin around the table.

So what else? Well, I think the title itself isn’t too hot. A bad play on words (not even a pun) on the word marriage. I think judging from my reaction in comparison to the ones quoted above, that perhaps for the restaging, to change the name, and perhaps say that it is about fish, or mitochondria or something other than weddings and human interactions. The people who pay attention to the stuff in the program and the press kits won’t quite have such large expectations and the reaction probably will be a lot more positive. (And to be fair, there were three positive reviews; one, two and three. It’s just that they weren’t terribly well written, and if I had led with them, I’m not certain what I would have been able to write).

Like this:

On Wednesday night I got to see Helge Letonja’s Steptext Dance Project perform The Bog Forest at Agora de la Danse. If memory serves it is playing tonight as well and tickets are cheap. According to the press fodder it’s about immigration. I’m not so certain I would believe that, but despite me not being able to see how it is about immigration I was pleasantly surprised with the performance. One reason I might not have been able to see how it is about immigration is quite literally because it is very dark. Both on a physical level and an emotional level.

Let’s start with the physical first. According to (again) the press fodder Laurent Schneegans is the person responsible for the lighting. Personally I would have given him the title of person responsible for the darkness. The piece is roughly comprised of three (or maybe four) sections and the first one and the last one take place in pretty much an unlighted black box. Now normally I’m not a big fan of not being able to see the dancers, but in this case it wasn’t that bad; a) there wasn’t that much dancing going on (to be more precise, a lot of moving, but not a lot of dancing) and b) given the name of the piece it was obvious that the lack of light was in order to add to the atmosphere.

At the beginning everybody pretty much had their face covered by something or other, whether it was an actual mask, or just a very large hood that then caused shadows, it was difficult at the beginning to figure out who was who. Although after the fact (and with judicious use of the press fodder, I can confidently state that) Christian Wolz starts out with some kind of chanting and Konan Dayot does some staggering around like a busted marionette. I wrote in my notes “a bunch of staged abstract tableaus in the dark.” And more than 24 hours after the fact, I still stand by that statement.

As an introduction to the performance it is effective. Very spooky. They use lighters, have flashlights aimed towards the audience and in general do just about everything you can think of to make you think that you’re in some kind of bog (or for the North American’s in the house a swamp – or if you want to get technical, both are wetlands although swamps tend to have trees, and bogs veer towards treelessness) you know the kind of place you imagine while you’re listening to Dale Hawkins or Lighting Hopkins. But the beginning of the performance as a means to understand that The Bog Forest is a “crossroads for six individual destinies…” I’m, not so certain.

The second part starts with a bang – well not actually a bang, but the aftermath of a bang with a humongous cloud of smoke hanging over the stage. It takes a while to dissipate but continues to add to the swamp-like atmosphere despite the lights actually being turned up and being bright enough so that I could see the dancing. Quite a cool effect, especially since the Agora de la danse is such a small space. At some point I’m going to have to bone up on my “how-to-make-a-large-cloud-of-smoke-in-the-dark-without-any-light-or-sound” notes because I sure as shootin’ had not clue how that cloud of smoke was able to get there.

With the aid of the light it actually became possible to not only identify the dancers (who were generally quite accomplished, if not really really good) but also since they were identifiable; recognize them as individuals. According to my notes there was the “Chinese Couple,” “Blondie,” the “Other Woman,” “The Turkish Guy” and “The Rabbit Guy” (who to be honest, wasn’t a dancer, but was the singer, Christian Wolz). Writing while they are performing doesn’t leave me an awful lot of time to think about suitable titles. Although in the case of “The Rabbit Guy” I could have gone with “The Singing Guy.” But since he carried around a rabbit for the better part of the first part and then that very same rabbit gave “The Other Woman” some sort of epileptic/hysterical fit. I went for the slightly more descriptive title.

The Chinese Couple were I-Fen Lin and Wei Meng Poon. They did a kick-ass duet that started with each of them on a separate square of straw (one stage front and left, the other stage back right) which went through a progression where Mr. Meng Poon removed Ms. Lin’s shirt and did what I called a “dance of tension.” (At some point I’m going to have to do my darnedest to memorize “Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet,” my vocabulary sucks the big one when it comes to describing how people move). But this one was where it appeared that there was an equal amount of pulling by both of them so as to keep everything in an equilibrium, more based around brief poses rather than a continuous series of movements.

Not quite the Ab Lounge, or i-Shape but close, and now that I think about it more, I’m certain that there is probably some yoga involved as well. Anyhows, after he takes her shirt they talk in what I presume is Chinese, which turns into an argument, at which point Mr. Meng Poon returns Ms. Lin’s shirt, they reconcile and then she starts coughing while he starts either crying or laughing.

Even with identifiable characters, I’m still not certain what it has to do with immigration…

Prior to the argument over the shirt Ms. Lin and the “Other Woman,” Emilia Giudicelli, have a very graceful, extremely well done, but unfortunately all too short duet. While watching it I was struck by how well they performed together. I’m not certain, but I don’t think they could have been more synchronized had they been doing it together nightly for the past 5 years. There were also two quartets where everything seems right with the world, not quite line dancing, not quite Jazz Dance, not quite Modern Dance either, but very very satisfying. If I remember correctly “The Turkish Guy” (who is actually Brazilian) Leonardo Rodrigues is not quite dancing in counterpoint to the other four, but is dancing on his own in opposition to the other four.

The three other tableaus that were notable were when The Rabbit Guy, Mr. Wolz, hummed around The Turkish Guy, Mr. Rodrigues, in effect making him move as a consequence of the; quote, sound waves; unquote, emanating from his mouth. Think of a leaf on the wind or a piece of cloth in a pool or a river. In retrospect it could be considered a variation on a theme that was started with the “dance of tension” and is continued towards the end when all five dancers join in a game of “keep aloft.”

The set is mainly made up on one side (actually one third) what looks very similar to a miniaturized version of “Lipstick Forest / Nature Légère” by Claude Cormier at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. Branches and twigs instead of trunks, orange instead of pink and suspended curtain-like one on top of another instead of planted on the floor like a fence. But close enough. The other two thirds is made up of some sort of net that has a lot of plastic bags attached to it. Depending on the light, or the lack of light, the plastic bags can kind of look like leaves, handkerchiefs, plastic bags or just something sort of spooky. Or maybe that was just me anticipating Halloween. But, one of the plastic bags becomes the object of the game of “keep aloft,” whereby the dancers try to keep the bag in the air by blowing on it.

The third notable tableau was when “The Rabbit Guy,” Mr. Wolz starts to draw on “Blondie,” Mr. Dayot’s back. It’s notable in that everyone is on stage and no one stops moving, but my eye was riveted on Mr. Dayot’s back, ignoring everything else. Which leads me to believe that whatever dancing was being done wasn’t particularly compelling, because the drawing itself wasn’t all that hot – but the process of drawing was extremely compelling.

Overall, I was impressed, not so much by the narrative or the theme, but by the movement. Mr. Letonja does have a very specific dance vocabulary (which I’m not certain I would be able to learn at this late stage) rooted in movements from nature, like the wind or water and he does translate it extremely well for humans. I’m certain it makes complete sense in his head how it relates to immigration and immigrants, but that didn’t translate to me sitting in the audience, maybe next time I need to go to the performance that has the talk afterwards where they explain everything, although to be honest, all I really would want to know is how they got they cloud of smoke up there, but I’m rambling now, so let me stop.

At the risk of repeating myself, it is the movements taken from nature and reproduced by Mr. Meng Poon, Ms. Lin, Mr. Dayot, Mr. Rodrigues and Ms. Giudicelli that truly make The Bog Forest something wicked-cool.

Lets get this out of the way first and foremost: For the past two weeks I have been living and breathing Jocelyne Montpetit almost 24/7. Back in August I interviewed her, and if you’ve been watching this website regularly, you already know that there is a six-part interview with her available for your viewing pleasure. Well, in order to get that six-part interview here, I needed to do some editing. And in order to do the editing, I had to watch the film, again, and again, and again, and again, you get the picture.

All that being a kind of long winded way of saying that I’m not objective in the least. But then again, I rarely am objective about anything. But I digress.

The short version of my review of Avril est le mois le plus cruel by Jocelyne Montpetit at the Agora de la Danse could be summed up as “It’s great! Go see it.” But if you want the longer more detailed version, keep scrolling.

As you might have guessed, it was inspired by the first four lines of T.S. Eliot’s poem from 1922, The Wasteland. But, not the English version (obviously), the French. I transcribed the version that were in the program notes, but then noticed that they seemed a little bit different from what I was used to.

The English

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one you prefer and if the differences are significant or not.

I very deliberately did not re-read The Wasteland, not even the beginning before going to see the performance because a) I thought that it was inspired by the first four verses of the poem (my mistake; vers in French doesn’t mean verses, it means lines) and b) I did not want to make the mistake of wanting, or expecting, the performance to be a literal representation of the poem (I’ve already seen one of those).

And I’m glad I didn’t reread it until after the performance, because, knowing myself I would have gone looking for direct connections between both, and there really aren’t any. The performance is all about sadness. It just as easily could have been named after Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Fauré’s Requiem in D minor or anything else imbued with an overwhelming sense of sadness.

Anyhows, now that I got that out of the way we can get on with everything else. Before anything begins there’s a humongous block of ice (about four feet high, two feet wide and eight inches thick) front stage left and a bed with some glasses underneath it back stage right. I don’t know if it was intentional (and somehow I think it wasn’t) but on the night I was there (opening night, September 14) it looked like there was an image of a really really big tulip that hadn’t quite gotten around to blooming, yet. There also seemed to be something like pollen squirting out of the top.

I mention this, because if you use your imagination a tulip that’s just about to bloom with some pollen squirting from the top can, and does look like something else, and neither of them look like lilacs. I also mistakenly thought that the glasses under the bed were bubble wrap. I think I might have to go see my optometrist to make sure my prescription is correct.

Dressed in a white nightgown to start, Ms. Montpetit comes out on stage from the rear and starts wandering around the stage. Although I should be horsewhipped for using the word wandering. Unfortunately words fail me when I try to describe how Ms. Montpetit moves and I end up sounding like a blathering idiot. After thumbing through my thesaurus, I guess it could be called a combination of slow, in control of every muscle in her body, deliberately ungraceful, beautiful, and emotionally moving. But that’s 121 letters, the word wandering is nine letters.

As is mentioned in the program notes, Avril est le mois le plus cruel is the first in a trilogy of Elegies (or if you prefer, Élégies) that Ms. Montpetit is creating. Dedicated to Tomiko Takai, who died in May, I do not know if it was directly inspired by her death, but as I have already mentioned, her performance is very emotionally charged almost completely permeated with anguish, despondency, disconsolateness, dolefulness, dolor, dysphoria, forlornness, grief, heartache, melancholy, mournfulness, mourning, poignancy, sorrow, sorrowfulness, and woe (man I adore thesauruses!)

To quote another famous and sad piece of English literature, “there’s the rub,” expressing a difficult and deep emotion without saying a single word. But Ms. Montpetit makes it look as easy as falling off a log.

At this point, I gotta remember to mention Sonoyo Nishikawa who did the lighting, he (she? Are Japanese names like Italian names and the boys get the “O” and the girls the “A”?) did a phenomenal job. Not only did I think a bunch of glasses were bubble wrap, but about two thirds of the way through the performance, they made the bed disappear. Solely through judicious use of spotlights. I can’t say I was as enthralled by the soundtrack, some Arvo Pärt, Louis Dufort and Alessandro Scarlatti (at least I presume it is Alessandro Scarlatti, since the other two Scarlatti’s weren’t known for their vocal compositions and his first name is not noted in the program notes).

Beyond that, there’s not much more I can say. If you’re interested Ms. Montpetit not only “wandered” around the stage, sometimes she lay down on the bed, or next to the bed. There were a couple of times she writhed around on stage or crawled from place to place. She changed costumes three times, and by my count there were six parts (although other people who probably know far more than me say there were only three). And it all takes about an hour.

But basically, Ms. Montpetit is a living and breathing testament to the concept that somethings truly can’t be spoken or written down. They need to be experienced. Avril est le mois le plus cruel is one of them.

Avril est le mois le plus cruel continues at the Agora de la danse, tonight, tomorrow and Friday the 23rd at 8 pm. Tickets are $26. And I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that it has a couple of more engagements both here in Montreal and elsewhere.